The Weakest Link (& Other Things Ianto Doesn't Understand About Jack)
by Inusagi
Summary: Someetimes, Ianto just does not understand him.


Disclaimer: I don't own Torchwood. I also don't own any of the shows I mentioned.

*.*.*

**How he hates quiz shows.**

Ianto likes trivia. He likes shit TV with snarky people.

So, _the Weakest Link_ was his favourite. With their inconsistent schedule, he wasn't able to catch it live, much, but hey, that's why he bought the TiVo, wasn't it?

The problem was the outright _tantrum_ Jack would throw when he tried to watch it.

When Ianto refused to turn it off—_It's my flat, damn it. Go do something productive if you don't want to watch it_—Jack would stomp off. He'd bang pots and pans in the kitchen or take a shower and scream songs from _Miss Saigon_ at the top of his lungs.

Once, he punched buttons on his wrist strap until the power went out for the entire neighbourhood.

Twice, he stomped his way back to the Hub, slamming the door as he went.

Ianto supposed he could make an effort to watch it when Jack wasn't around, but he was _always_ there and nine out of ten times, Jack chose what they watched. It was always rubbish, too. _Top Gear_ or boring documentaries on Shakespeare and the Roman Empire.

He just wanted to watch _the Weakest Link _in peace. At the very least, he wanted a better reason not to than "Anne Robinson is creepy."

**How he claims to never drink, but shows up in the middle of the night, completely pissed. **

Jack liked to drag them out to the pub for "team building" exercises—really, those exercises comprised of lots of alcohol and perhaps a bit of karaoke. Regardless of what anyone else was drinking, or how much, Jack would stick to water. Sometimes he tried to play it off as being designated driver or wanting there to be at least one sober member of the Torchwood staff to chase after rogue Weevils. Other times, he insisted that in the 51st century, alcohol was a drug in the way crystal meth and heroin were in the 21st and it did bad things to his physiology.

Ianto had personally never heard a bigger load of bullshit in his life.

He thought sometimes that Jack had a _problem_. Admittedly, the AA chip was one of the bigger clues, but he'd also never seen Jack drink that he wasn't completely off his arse.

Most of the time, though, Ianto thought that Jack just had issues with self-control. For one thing, he wasn't sure exactly how alcoholism would work in a body that reset itself to factory settings regularly. For another, keeping a _very nice_ single malt on his desk is really odd behaviour for an alcoholic.

Either way, Ianto wasn't about to ask about it, or admit that he quite liked it when Jack knocked on his door at half three, pissed and insisting it was the perfect time to waltz around the flat to music only he could hear. It was sort of sweet.

**How he pines after the Doctor but apparently **_**does not**_** have a fetish for him. **

Ianto met the Doctor once, for like half a second when Director Hartman was showing him around, in that calm-before-the-storm moment before the whole world went to hell.

He was quite fit, even if those trainers didn't go with that suit.

So when Jack came back from...his holiday, there was something obviously wrong with him. He wouldn't talk about it, but he no longer made comments about "the right kind of doctor," so Ianto reckoned he was pining.

It wasn't that he was _jealous_.

He _wasn't_.

Okay. Ianto was jealous. But he knew there was no way to compete. The Doctor wasn't just good-looking, he travelled in all of space and time and apparently lived forever, like Jack.

So he did what any self-respecting 21st century male would do.

He dressed up like the Doctor. They'd done dress-up games before, once with the Captain's RAF uniform and another time with Ianto's old rugby kit, so he was _sure_ Jack would love it.

It took a bit of planning, if only to grow his hair out enough to do that spikey-uppy thing that the Time Lord's hair did.

Brown suit with pale blue pinstripes? Check. Brown swirly tie? Check. Cream-coloured Chuck Taylors? Check.

Ianto thought he looked pretty damn good, in fact.

Jack...was not impressed.

Actually, in the biggest bloody plot twist of Ianto's life, he was _livid_. He'd never seen Jack—his lover or his boss—so angry. Curios from his desk were thrown. There was shouting about how _if I wanted you to be someone else, I would just go fuck someone else_ and _if I see that goddamn suit again, I will set it on fire._

The whole situation left Ianto very confused.

**How he pretends that Torchwood is still super secret when nearly everyone in South Wales (except Rhys. And the Cardiff police department.) knows about it.**

Of all the things Ianto wanted to know about Jack's mysterious past, the most pressing would have been "What possessed you to have _TORCHWOOD_ laser cut onto the SUV's exterior?"

It wasn't that he thought keeping their organisation secret was the best course of action (after all, there were only so many times the general public would believe "It was terrorists. Not robots from a different dimension. Definitely terrorists." or "That big, toothy beastie inexplicably wearing a boiler suit and reeking of sewage? That was a cheeky bloke from Uni with a Halloween mask."), but discretion, as they say, is the better part of valour. And, more importantly, what the Queen wanted.

Ianto was a big fan of following the orders of the person who signed his paycheques.

But not Jack. Jack, the smarmy bastard that he was, ordered _labels_ with the Torchwood logo on them. And those odd clear clingy-things that he'd managed to stick everywhere from the basketball hoop in the Hub to the window of the Tourist Office—which, he seemed to have forgotten, was _the entrance to their super secret underground base_.

And still, somehow, put on airs of the utmost scandal when Owen ordered pizza under the company name and when he found out the dry cleaner Ianto favoured had found them out.

Ianto didn't point out that it was Jack's greatcoat that had done it. He simply let Jack live on in that fool's paradise.

**How woefully incompetent he is at hiding information. **

It was a good thing they left the hacking to Toshiko, really. If it were up to Jack, there'd be a ridiculous trail of cyber-breadcrumbs leading right back to them, with a neon sign flashing "Hack us back, posers!"

Subtlety was not his strong suit.

Nor was subterfuge.

Ianto had been with the Cardiff branch for less than a fortnight when he found hundred-year-old cases with the Captain's scrawl, so the immortality was never a surprise. He'd been half convinced Jack was some sort of vampire or incubus before he'd gasped back to life during the Bilis Manger mess.

It was only about a month later, right before Suzie had completely lost her marbles, that he found paper trail for Flat Holm Island. That particular "secret" not only showed off Jack's ridiculous ineptitude, but also the fact that Owen was not doing his inventory, and hadn't for months—which really helped in the whole "stealing morphine for Lisa" thing.

Ianto reckoned that the last major secret is Alice, the daughter who lived in Bristol with her son. Jack had put at least a token effort into hiding this one, with the fake names and witness protection schemes, so he wasn't going to mention it. But maybe he'll make a suggestion that if one doesn't want anyone to discover his secret family, he should avoid setting curious gentlemen to balance his chequebook.

*.*.*

A/N: I had the most fun ever writing this. I hope you enjoyed it.


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